In the late 1970s, matters of scientific integrity (and the occasional lack thereof) in the nation's research laboratories began
to capture the attention of the American public. In 1981, future
vice president and then Tennessee congressman Albert Gore,
Jr., chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee
of the House Science and Technology Committee, held the first
hearings on the emerging problem. In 1985, Congress enacted
the Health Research Extension Act, which required institutions
seeking research funds from the Public Health Service (PHS),
the oversight body of the NIH, to establish “an administrative
process to review reports of scientific fraud” and “report to the
Secretary any investigation of alleged scientific fraud which
appears substantial.” Four years later, in March 1989, the Office
of Scientific Integrity (OSI) was created under the jurisdiction
of the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The
name “Office of Scientific Integrity” was originally proposed as
a kind of Orwellian joke, but it stuck, at least for the short life
of the new agency.

The OSI mandate was to protect the integrity of scientific
research in the United States by investigating allegations of scientific fraud—largely in biology, a natural focus for an agency
administered by the NIH—that came its way. In May 1992, after

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